


A Hundred Hands, A Thousand Ways

by ofvanity



Category: X-Men (Movies), X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Abuse, Alternate Canon, Alternate Universe - Dark, Alternate Universe - Dystopia, F/F, Harm to Animals, M/M, Nuclear Warfare, Scars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-26
Updated: 2012-08-26
Packaged: 2017-11-12 23:22:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/496805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ofvanity/pseuds/ofvanity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Having failed in Cuba, the survivors fortify and stay vigilant and spoon-feed Hank when he's catatonic but at least they’re together and at least they're alive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Hundred Hands, A Thousand Ways

**Author's Note:**

  * For [macabre](https://archiveofourown.org/users/macabre/gifts).



Alex dies in Cuba, blood congealing in the sand until it turns deep red.  
  
Afterwards, in the mansion, in his home, Charles is furious, his skin prickles everywhere the sand sticks and it takes six scalding showers before every grain is gone.  
  
-  
  
He meets Logan a second time by accident. Scavenging the supermarket close to the city but closer to home, he picks up a string of swear words toned to vaguely familiar note. Logan is stealing a car someone left on the side of the road and playing a radio show when Charles approaches.  
  
“Hello again, Logan.”  
  
“Do I know you?”  
  
 _Charles Xavier. We’ve met._  
  
-  
  
Dinner tonight is a can of beans and a slice of toast each. The beans were nicked from the Red Cross tents in Toledo and they’re the same tasteless drivel that everyone else gets. It doesn’t matter much to Raven, though, she's not very picky and Angel mashes all her food up until it’s essentially jam. Chewing, as they’ve learned from experience, rips the stitches in her cheek.  
  
Raven does the washing up afterwards, at a nearby stream, while Angel mends a new tear in her shirt. By the time the sun is coming down, and the stream runs wine dark, they put the fire out and huddle against a tree together. All the stars come out but they’re too close to a major city to appreciate them fully. Angel picks her fingernails and sings under her breath, the same song, every night, “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound…”  
  
Raven kisses her bruised lips and every night, volunteers for the first watch shift.  
  
-  
  
Around noon, Logan heads out to the grounds with all his equipment and makes sure to lock the house behind him. Hank is already awake and even if he’s a bit gun shy, he’ll do what he has to in order to protect the house. It’s the way he’s been taught in the last three years.  
  
It isn’t until his fourth round of the property that Logan spots a creature. It’s a small rodent, a squirrel on closer inspection, sluggish with starvation. Logan can’t spare the ammo and instead, he claws up the tree opposite very gently and to the edge of the branch that crosses branches from the other tree. The squirrel is utterly still, carrying a sad excuse for an acorn but otherwise oblivious.  
  
That is, until Logan swings off the branch and clips the creature’s body, leaving jagged slashes down its back. Blood pools over the wounds rapidly and the poor thing barely reaches the tree trunk before it collapses. Logan swings down in time to catch it, slitting its throat to silence the frantic snips. The squirrel bleeds and dies in Logan’s hands.  
  
Logan wraps it in a handkerchief and brings it back to the mansion for dinner.  
  
-  
  
Angel wakes up just past one in the morning and Raven is slumped against a log, huddled under a blanket. It’s not very cold yet, only mid-October, but they lived in the tropics long enough to expect warm weather. Angel takes her own blanket over and slumps beside her. “Hey.”  
  
Raven smiles at her, leaning over to kiss her. “What’re you doing up?”  
  
“I can take watch, you should get some sleep.”  
  
“I’ll do my best,” Raven agrees and stands to settle in their only sleeping bag.  
  
“I’m serious,” Angel says and perches beside her while Raven twists and turns in the bag, “You need to sleep.”  
  
Raven’s gold eyes flick up at her, visible only through the sparse moonlight. She watches Angel with utter seriousness. “I know.”  
  
-  
  
The world slips back into focus with the sounds of Charles collecting his clothes. He’s wearing his pants and trousers but holding his shoes and shirt, tossing clothes around the room in search of something else. “Have you seen my,” he murmurs and then exclaims, “Oh, here it is.”  
  
His room is on a different floor of the house so he dresses himself down to the cuffs before smoothing down his hair and says, “Must be off now, I’ll see you in the morning, Logan.”  
  
Logan watches him go, mouth twisting unpleasantly but he does not speak a word. The Professor has been crawling into his bed with blindfolds on since Stalingrad was firebombed and it’s always the same story. Charles will initiate, Charles will moan and sweat and break down into a mess,  Charles will come, and then collect his clothes.  
  
Logan doesn’t want more, but he wants Charles to wake the fuck up. Alex has been dead for years and the world went on without him.  
  
-  
  
The nuclear war began viciously: cities and villages in flames, counts of the dead, nightly news reports and clips of Josef Stalin’s brash Russian. New York City and Moscow were the first to go. Molotov cocktail dreams lit up the sky and even so far from the city, in Westchester, Charles could hear them all dying, their thoughts charred, entire generations vaporized. After the initial scramble to mutilate in large numbers, there was stalemate and in New York, survivors mourned by breathing black into every future generation.  
  
Charles remembers this the most, because Sean would sit in Alex’s room all day long and talk to him as if he were in the room. Even dead, Sean lied to him. “We saved the world. Isn’t that crazy, man? A couple of teenagers and a Professor’s kid sister. Everything is good now, your death was not in vain, brother.”  
  
Logan joins them in the mansion soon after. They fortify and stay vigilant and spoon-feed Hank when he gets in one of his catatonic fits but what’s most important is that they’re together and they’re alive. They start fucking because Logan quits smoking and his hands are empty.  
  
-  
  
Mutants are revealed in the second year of the war and so began the real fighting. While the US and Russia blast each other open, Erik rallies all of the mutants he can find into a quasi-army. There are chapters and chapters of them and they wear black armbands all the time until the politicians can’t keep them hidden anymore.  
  
Raven and Angel, arms bound in black, stand at his side and don’t recognize their own zealotry until a homemade bomb blows off part of Raven’s hand. Until Angel is face down in a pool of her own blood and Erik is screaming at them all in furious German.  
  
They are crossing the California border into Arizona when they stop running long enough to realize they shouldn’t. Tensions with humans are escalating, and after having defected they are being hunted by mutants everywhere. There is a refugee camp in Denver they’re almost fried in and Angel has distinctive wounds on her face so they keep running, living off the very little they have. When they’re not cold, they’re hungry, and if not hungry, then tired, and if not tired — then dead.  
  
The Mississippi river runs black the night they cross it.  
  
-  
  
Hank is out hunting with Logan on a Wednesday, when they meet the girls on the fringes of the property. They’re holding hands and talking softly to each other and it takes Hank a full minute to realize Logan is going to attack them. “No,” he says, holding a hand out to stop him. “Don’t.”  
  
“Do you know them?” Logan asks but keeps his claws out.  
  
“That’s Raven, the blonde, and Angel,” Hank says quietly.  
  
“Oh, fuck. Ambush?”  
  
“No,” Hank replies, adjusting his glasses, “Asylum.”  
  
-  
  
Angel and Raven are seated in the dusty room for a total of four minutes before Charles scurries into the kitchen to make tea. Tea being a forgiving term, that is. Raven expected as much, however and heads after him.  
  
The kitchen is just as dark and dirty as the rest of the house, virtually empty except for a table and a stack of dishes on it. Instead of acknowledging her presence, Charles goes to and fro, opening cabinets seemingly at random.  
  
“I’m sorry I missed his funeral.”  
  
Charles slams a cabinet shut, “Apologies won’t bring him back.”  
  
“I know, I just,” Raven shifts her weight, “I wanted you to know missing the funeral is something I genuinely regret.”  
  
Charles opens another cabinet and closes it and continues to do so in a tense silence. As far as Raven can see, the cabinets are mostly empty. After a moment, Charles stops and stands still, shoulders raised. His voice is low with fury, “There hasn’t been tea of any form in this house for over a year.”  
  
“But sometimes you forget and find yourself searching for it.”  
  
Charles turns around and he seems so different to Raven with his hair cropped close to his scalp and cheeks thin with starvation. His clothes fit him looser but he’s only dressed in a black shirt and slacks. His belt is pulled tight; Raven can see the man-made notches. He looks lost and says, “Why are you here?”  
  
Raven lifts her mutilated hand in response, frowning deeply and flicking into her blue form. “I traveled across the country to see you again, we’ve been walking for what feels like months, I’m standing in our house for the first time in years and you’re asking why?”  
  
“You left,” Charles says and it’s not an accusation, just a fact.  
  
“I came back for you, for my brother, if I still have one, that is.”  
  
Charles is silent, biting his lip and staring at the coiled scars on Raven’s hand. “What happened?”  
  
Raven walks towards him, hand poised before her. “Homemade terrorism.”  
  
“Did he do that to Angel?”  
  
“Personally,” Raven says. “He told us not to hurt our own kind and backhanded her behind closed doors. She won’t talk to me about it but I got us out of there. Meanwhile, Janos is almost definitely a hostage and Azazel is treated like a slave.”  
  
Charles shrugs. “They joined him willingly. As you did. Heal it, hide it, in your blonde form.”  
  
Raven purses her lips, “I can’t. I was in this form when I was injured and it affects any other shape I take. They’re scars, Charles, they follow me everywhere.”  
  
“Did you come all this way to show me your wounds?”  
  
“No,” she says and takes her hand away from him. “We’re wanted in this country, not just me and Angel, but mutants as a whole, Erik is starting something fucked up and we can’t be here for when public executions start. We’re going to keep running and I want you to come with us, as far as we can get, as fast as we can go.”  
  
-  
  
Alex’s room smells like dust when Charles enters. It used to smell like the cologne Alex wore, like his leather jacket and the vague scent of singed objects and smoke. Charles left the room be as often as possible so he wouldn’t disturb the scent but it faded eventually. All that’s left of his room is a photograph of him and Charles framed on the night stand. Charles wears Alex’s leather jacket in the winter and it is thick enough to keep him warm.  
  
Sean startles the Professor when he shuts the door behind him. The Professor watches him enter and can’t find words in his throat to speak. Sean doesn’t mind, he’s been searching for a silent moment to confess his discourse and stands at the center of the room.  
  
“Alex,” Sean begins, “once told me that he couldn’t swim. Long time ago way before that day on the beach. I don’t even remember what brought it up or why he told me but he did. He said he couldn’t swim, never learned, no one ever tried to teach him. It wasn’t a big deal, I forgot about it to be honest. I forgot about it until I was carrying him over the water and Angel shot out the gliders that Hank made. I had this flash, this, like, fear, when we were falling that I was going down but then it occurred to me that Alex couldn’t swim.”  
  
Sean pauses for a moment and Charles glances at him but there are shadows in his eyes. “So, I, we, land on the beach. Crash landing, but land nonetheless and he shoots Angel and it all goes on. And when Erik deflects the bullet and it hits him, right in the patch where his plate burned off, it almost,” Sean clears his throat, “it almost killed me to watch him die. And Christ, fuck the Americans, fuck the communists, fuck Erik, and honestly, fuck you, Charles, because you don't even know your influence. But I did that. I put him on that beach. I lined him up for the shot.”  
  
Sean’s voice is rough and he sniffs but then barks out an ugly, broken laugh, “If only that son of a bitch had learned to swim, it could have gone differently.”  
  
“Sean,” Charles begins tentatively and the boy wipes at his face, sniffing again. “It was not your fault.”  
  
Sean turns towards Charles, approaching him with a sneer on his face. “Of course it wasn’t. It wasn’t yours either. Or Raven’s so you shouldn’t shun her. It wasn’t Hank’s, or Angel’s fault, and it sure as hell was not Logan’s fault so you should stop punishing him. You should pay attention to whose fault it was.”  
  
“I know what Erik did.”  
  
“You do?” Sean asks and it sounds condescending, “Then explain to me why we’ve hidden here for three years, wearing old leather and eating squirrels in this—this mausoleum! A gravesite. That Erik built for you.”  
  
-  
  
Leaving New York meant another chance, returning to England or living peacefully in France, it meant Raven’s gold eyes and leather bound books, eating seafood – Charles has missed oysters terribly – and food on Sean’s plate regularly. These are all futures and pasts and they are all the things Charles thinks of when he wakes up in the dead of night with Erik standing over him, bright eyes beneath his helmet, and a knife in his hand.  
  
It gleams—

**Author's Note:**

> "Death has a hundred hands and walks by a thousand ways." -T.S. Eliot


End file.
